Best of the Blog: My Communication Game
“I heard about Brave Writer and wondered what The Writer’s Jungle is.”
“The Writer’s Jungle is a manual that teaches moms how to teach writing.”
“Yes, obviously, but how does it compare to Writing Strands or IEW?”
“Well, it teaches you, the mom, how to teach writing.”
“Okay, okay. I get it. But what does it teach that is different from IEW for example?”
“Let me try that again. The Writer’s Jungle teaches the mom how to teach her kids to write. See, it shows her how to teach writing. Like, it actually gives you instructions for how to teach writing.”
Flapping my arms wasn’t helping.
Then the other day at our homeschool co-op, another mom asked me the dreaded question: “So what is The Writer’s Jungle and how does it compare with….?”
I stuffed some chips into my mouth to buy time.
Good thing I did. A friend (and recent convert to Brave Writing) spoke up. She has a delightful German accent and so her comment will always have that ring to it when I think of it again.
“Oh dat’s easy. The od-ther programmes tell you v-what to do. They don’t show you how to do it.”
Thank you! That’s it exactly.
It isn’t enough to be told to write a paragraph or a letter with a set of guidelines. We have to start with how to get words, how to move pencils, how to think. First we help our kids learn how to write. Later we can show them what to write. Or by then, they might show us!
